DMITRY ARTYUSHENKO: EXPOSING AND SUPRESSING COLLUSIONS WITH USE OF PRICE ALGORYTHMS IS A NEW STAGE IN DEVELOPING ANTI-CARTEL PRACTICE

On 4 October 2018, Deputy Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department spoke at an international workshop on “Efficient law enforcement practice against cartels”

The speaker dined price algorithms, their functions and gave examples of their unlawful use.

Dmitry Artyushenko described auction robots in detail. Using an auction robot, a bidder is many times more active than a bidder without robots. He emphasized that although using robots is not a violation, they can ease significantly use of unlawful bid-rigging schemes.

“Companies in collusion fix the reduction limit in advance – 0.5-1% of the initial maximum contract price – depending on who should win the auction. Special software can also destabilize the work of e-trading sites to make sure that competitors do not win”, pointed out the speaker.

FAS representatives specially analyzed the work of software developers, enabling to pursue anticompetitive strategy at auctions.

Dmitry Artyushenko said that FAS has already identified several software developers and will continue this work to identify companies cooperating with them and using price algorithms as a tool of antimonopoly violations.

He gave several examples from FAS practice on exposing bid-rigging with use of auction robots and informed about expanding FAS powers on proving collusions that used “price algorithms”.

“Efficient anti-cartel enforcement under escalation of use of special software by violators will be impossible without granting FAS the right to request information – by Court ruling – classified as secrecy of communications”, underlined Dmitry Artyushenko.